General Motors employed 25,000 people in Anderson, Indiana in the early 1980s. Today, it employs just one. His job is to maintain and, if possible, sell the buildings and properties that once produced an array of parts for GM cars, but now stand deserted.

Anderson’s experience over the past 25 years is now being echoed in many other communities throughout the US and Canada that have depended on GM and its smaller Detroit-based rivals, Ford Motor and Chrysler.